Strange and beautiful
by thestartling
Summary: Two begging souls able to quell the same desire in each of them, able to provide the right answer: I accept you. 50 sentences about Harry and Luna for the 1sentence Livejournal challenge.


For the 1sentence challenge at livejournal.

**Title: **Strange and Beautiful  
**Fandom: **Harry Potter  
**Pairing: **Harry/Luna  
**Theme Set: **Beta  
**Rating: **G to light PG-13 (sex implied in one or two sentences)  
**Notes: **I think these two are incredibly cute and sweet together, and meant for each other. See also: alternatively hilarious and crazy fun to write. Sometimes I meant for sentences to be related to each other, sometimes I interpret the same idea in other ways for different themes, but mostly I just write (out of order) and see what apparates. Also sometimes: I cheat.

Title: "Strange and Beautiful" by Aqualung. It's really cute and really suits them!

Behind #32: I have this theory in my head that Luna held onto the kitchen table her mother died over during that experiment. So in my Harry/Luna head canon, the table becomes something she shares with him.

#12 is my favorite.

If you don't recognize the creature, it's because I made it up (so all, except bowtruckles and the blibbering humdinger).

This took me too effing long to complete-like, over a year too long. I just suddenly got back into writing. We'll see if these two/the accomplishment I feel from completing this will inspire me to keep writing.

* * *

1. walking  
No, actually, it did not surprise him that 'going for a walk' meant traveling, as well as talking, backwards; that she whispered "Uoy evol I" and he said it back was the shocker.

2. waltz  
He was just too busy to ever dance with her (this is what he tells himself, along with: it's not that her scent engulfs me and presence calms me and both of these—and so much more—make me want to hold her even closer).

3. wishes  
"I should never think what's in your heart is mine to know," she whispers, and that part of him is exactly what isn't brave enough to admit her possession of it.

4. wonder  
She never asked him if he loved her because she had never asked him to do so; it was enough to just hold his hand and marvel at how beautiful the days were when he let her.

5. worry  
When Harry tries to tell her, he makes the mistake of phrasing it like this: "I think I've been bitten by some love bug" to which Luna exclaims, "Oh, _no_, Harry, the Gulf Coast Double-headed _Lune de miel_ Bug? Harry, you mustn't lie on your stomach or your—...appendage! will shoot you through the ceiling! Wait here, yes, like that on your back, and I'll fetch Madame Pomfrey" and she's dashed off before he can even think _What appendage are you talking about oh god what have I—_

6. whimsy  
They counted the Bowtruckles swarming around the container of woodlice she held out; "Seven," she finished, before twisting her lips in thought, then murmuring, "I think six would be just right." (Harry's "Six what?" only served to widen her smile.)

7. waste/wasteland  
She likes to let the dishes pile up all week, and then on Sundays (Saturdays, really, but he doesn't correct her) wash them all the muggle way, and eventually the entire kitchen is covered in soap suds.

8. whiskey & rum  
Now she's gone, and he can't be in the house on Sundays that are really Saturdays—at least the owls have learned to take his mail to the Weasley's on the weekends.

9. war  
Her lip is busted and blood is dribbling down her chin, and he knows it's okay to want to make her feel better—they're _friends_—but he has to let himself believe that it's just the chaos and danger around them that makes him want to kiss her pain away.

10. weddings  
They went through the charade, with the reception and the aisle and the hundred or so guests, but they knew the real ceremony had happened months before: she signed a letter with his surname and, after he questioned it, asked him not to call it a mistake.

11. birthday  
"Harry, I require your finger again," she practically sang, and he achingly pressed the crossing ribbons against the package for the umpteenth time while she applied the tape and bow—after she finished, it was a wonder he avoided paper cuts while ripping into the wrapping to get to his very malevolent, and very naked, present.

12. blessing  
One day, she grabbed a marker and colored a heart over his scar—when others requested an explanation, she said, "Blue is more masculine" and left it at that.

13. bias  
"Eccentric,"the papers would describe her in their numerous wedding announcements; _The Quibbler _pointed out, "If you hadn't already noticed, eccentric suits Harry Potter."

14. burning  
She tells him his skin is warm because it is infused with love—"Can I have yours?" he asks, but they privately tell themselves to dismiss it as fever-induced delirium.

15. breathing  
After he asks her why she is doubling the numbers as she counts: "Each time we inhale, our mothers do, too; Should we let that go unacknowledged?" ("_No_," he gasps, finally, as she turns her back to him—it was rhetorical, but—"no.")

16. breaking  
She shimmers with sweat and arches, and it drives him crazy to see this new type of disheveled on her, this private unkemptness, and to know that the most balanced soul he's ever met is so disarranged by _him._

17. belief  
Harry admired her faith in anything; in Crumple-horned Snorkacks, in the idea that there was no such thing as Saturday, in _The Quibbler_, but most of all, in the belief that he was only a boy—one who lived, yes, but many boys lived, so that was not quite the quality that made him so heroic to her.

18. balloon  
It took him a while, but eventually he persuaded her that it was the _helium _and _not_ Tyndall's Clangtint-Sucking Mute Mouse that caused his high-pitched tone of voice (though she was entirely redeemed—and amused—two years later when one hid in his coffee thermos and his voice was like that for a week).

19. balcony  
There is a poem and the lady is in a silk kimono, staring down into a hazy fog, which slithers over the surface of the river… he doesn't care what he is in this analogy, so long as it's something her gaze will land on too.

20. bane  
After the third-and-a-half time the Heimlich maneuver had to be administered, Harry decided it was dangerous to eat around Luna while she read from any books whose titles ended in _Sutra._

21. quiet  
In bed they remain completely silent, watching one another, speaking only in the language warm bodies use, because if no sound escapes then it's like they're not even in this world, and they love being out of this world, together.

22. quirks  
They sit... sort of: she has her seat to the back and her back on the seat, her head over the edge, her feet over the top of the couch and bouncing to a rhythm only she hears—he hands her the remote with the most adoring, secret smile when she asks him to pass the "flickerbox changer, please."

23. question  
"If people _fall_ in love, wouldn't they risk scraping their knee?"  
"...Isn't it a risk worth taking?—and besides, they should catch you... I could catch you."

24. quarrel  
He misfires his anger and does her the injustice of calling her dispassionate, ranting about her constant serenity and tranquil, unruffled reactions—he turns on his heel and hates himself, but she follows him into the study. (She always follows. He needs her to.)

25. quitting  
He had slowly accepted the task of killing the dark lord like an embryo amasses its skin; she was the only one who made him feel that if he had shed it and chosen a different kind, he'd still accomplished what he was meant to ("it was always your life to choose, not your life to fulfill").

26. jump  
That, there, the way his lips curved and eyes shined, it must be a challenge—it must be saying, _What, are you chicken?_—and she would eagerly rise to meet him with, "Nonsense, I don't hold any sort of resemblance to poultry" and a forceful kiss.

27. jester  
She came out of the muggle dressing room, and he sputtered, nearly dropping his drink—later, once he had ushered her out of the bra department and away from the curious stares of other shoppers, Luna reasoned, "For that price, we should wear them on the outside."

28. jousting  
She liked his scar; he liked that she liked his scar; she liked that he liked that she liked his scar; he liked that she liked that he liked that she liked... he laughed, lost—but assured her that he liked playing this game; she liked to remind him it wasn't just a game.

29. jewel  
It was a giant, plastic, magenta heart, on a thin band of the cheapest metal, that she chose to wear on her ring finger that day—where she got it, why she was wearing it, how that gaudy gem even stayed on that tiny ring, he didn't know; he didn't ask (but he found he rather liked the feel of it against his palm).

30. just  
It was just this: he was known as an important somebody and she was an insufferable nobody, so if you had to give it a reason, it was that they were each one-half to an important-insufferable-somebody-nobody ("...or you could say 'a person,'" Harry might suggest).

31. smirk  
She is absolutely fascinated by the permanence of muggle tattoos, and though he knows it's not his business, he does warn that it's quite the faux pas to get someone's name—he's even more worried by the subtle glint in her eye betraying her usual, serene smile (eight years later, he finally sees the tattoo under her left breast, over her heart, a little pink lightning bolt).

32. sorrow  
She shows him one way to bury the pain, soothing him under her mum's kitchen table, guiding his hands, not realizing at first how it's healing both of them—_like this? _he asks, and she asks herself too, because she's not sure she wants this pain gone yet—Then: _Yes, _she concedes, _Like this._

33. stupidity  
It was Ron—admittedly the thickest of the thick when it came to women—who had to explain to Harry that he was being oblivious to Luna's sexual advances: "Mate, if she comes into the room in nothing but her unmentionables saying 'all of my clothes seem to have been hidden by classmates, can you help me warm up?,' you _don't _go looking for her pants, that's your invitation to _get into them._"

34. serenade  
"_Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?" _she says, and he just blinks, then nods—but Harry doesn't know what it means (or that Luna has no idea what it means either), and he's further perplexed when Fleur is falling into her husband's arms, erupting in laughter.

35. sarcasm  
Harry tries to see it from her point of view: yes, he has typically shown her a very wry sense of humor that he knows is always hard for her to grasp—but he still really can't understand it; Out of everything he'd said, some of it intentionally funny, how could she possibly mistake the "Will you marry me?" part as the joke? (He was only comforted by the fact that Luna was incapable of cynical laughter—she was truly eager to give him some heartfelt giggling, and that was almost, _almost _like a "yes.")

36. sordid  
In case she dies at an obscenely young age like their mothers, she writes to her children in a giant journal—Harry hates many things about it, but sometimes the journal wins the argument for her when he can no longer resist laughing at its color-changing "mood cover."

37. soliloquy  
He smiles and lets her believe they bucked convention and the guy said "I love you" first in their relationship—it's not until after they're married that he informs her she talks in her sleep ("remember when you fell asleep during that night picnic in the astronomy tower?").

38. sojourn  
It was a wonderful first kiss, despite the fact that Cho Chang was crying (despite the fact that his mind wandered to mistletoe, to nargles, to silvery gray eyes and cute, pale, possibly drier, lips).

39. share  
It was not really a matter of romance so much as it was two begging souls able to quell the same desire in each of them, able to provide the right answer: I accept you.

40. solitary  
Summertime means loneliness to her, but her portraits keep her company—she does think its rather curious, however, that more often than not her father catches her gazing quite longingly into the green eyes behind round glasses.

41. nowhere  
It amazes him, how far they can travel with just two seats on a couch in the common room and her whimsical, lilting voice.

42. neutral  
In her presence he is warmed and cooled at once; it's what he's always needed; she is.

43. nuance  
"You have your grandmothers' smiles"—as a child it bothers her to not know which parent made it plural, but when she grows up she realizes neither was wrong.

44. near  
She puts one to each ear and he asks, while laughing, what she is doing: "Even artichokes have hearts, Harry, so _shhhh_ I need to know if theirs beat as fast as mine when you're around."

45. natural  
Perhaps they looked up one day and wondered how the rings got there, and the house got there, and the children got there, because nothing had ever felt as unexpected as love presumably should have made things feel, and this made it almost hard to realize these sorts of life-changing developments.

46. horizon  
The moon doesn't always rise or set in the same place, but you don't really notice that; to you, what's important is how full she is; how brightly she bathes the world; how she's a constant in your sky (your life) no matter the location.

47. valiant  
"Luna, I _am_ your friend"—this is why he's a hero (her hero).

48. virtuous  
"We'll win," she says, and he believes _her_.

49. victory  
"_Oh, look, a Blibbering Humdinger!"_ and part of him aches to turn around and hold her and quiver, _thank you, thank you, _but she's right because she's always right when it comes to him, he needs peace and quiet—so he pulls the cloak around him even though he'd like to put it around her too.

50. defeat  
"Your shoulders droop," she observes, and scoops then cups her hands above his left one; she makes a motion of shoveling whatever she's caught over her own and then says, "There—I'm helping you carry some of the weight now."


End file.
